?DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests partial support for the fourth Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the Neurobiology of Cognition and for its associated Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) for trainees. The driving force behind the GRC is the rapid pace of convergent findings in molecular, cellular circuit and systems neuroscience, augmented by technical developments in simultaneously monitoring and manipulating activity across wide brain regions during complex cognitive tasks. These developments combined with genetic manipulations allowing cell-targeting and computational approaches provide the basis for evolving descriptions of neuronal circuits and dynamics, neurophysiological processes and computational principles underlying cognitive functions. The goal of this GRC is to continue promoting communication and collaboration across relevant levels of analysis among empirical scientists and theoreticians working in the field, emphasizing the most recent findings. The associated GRS, held just prior to the GRC, is designed to provide opportunities for doctoral and post-doctoral trainees to communicate their most recent findings and perspectives, and to prepare them for more in-depth participation in the parent GRC that immediately follows. One of the important features of this GRC is participation of several leading clinician-scientists with unique clinical perspective on a variety of cognitive disorders caused by brain damage and insights into normal cognitive function their work provides. Overall, the program is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together behavioral, neuroimaging, electrophysiological techniques and manipulations targeting specific cell types with computational approaches aimed at constructing realistic models of cognitive operations. The format of the meeting promotes intensive interactions among investigators and trainees from different perspectives and analytic levels, and in particular, between clinicians, experimentalists and theorists.